This, They Call Orthodoxy?

Historically, there were great polymaths among the rabbis. But now, twenty-seven per cent of children in Israel attend yeshivas at which no mathematical, scientific or historical teaching is given, nor is any foreign language taught. This has nothing to do with historic Judaism, and perhaps that is why history is off the curriculum.

But it pales next to the fact that their fathers do not work in the ordinary sense of the word. Jews who don't work? This, they call Orthodoxy, asking for the old paths and walking therein? Husbands and fathers, the heads of households, who do not work?

So how do they eat? Well, they are paid by the State of Israel, an entity that they furiously did not want to be created, from whose military service they are exempt, and which they hold in such disdain that they are not beyond using physical force against its teenage conscripts of both sexes.

And the State of Israel is kept going by a gigantic subsidy from the American taxpayer. Joe Sixpack and the Hockey Moms are paying people thousands of miles away, who are not American citizens, to do nothing but read rabbinical texts all day, and to send their children to schools, also paid for by Joe Sixpack and the Hockey Moms, that do not teach mathematics, science, history or foreign languages.

Not that there is anything wrong with reading rabbinical texts. But Haredim elsewhere have always devoted a great deal of time to that while also devoting a great deal of time to supporting themselves and their families. Only in Israel have they found anyone daft enough to pay them not to work. Specifically, they have found the American taxpayer.

One for the Tea Parties, I feel.